Lichens Sentence Examples

This is especially the case in the lichens (symbiotic organisms composed of a fungal mycelium in association with algal cells), which are usually exposed to very severe fluctuations in external conditions.

Since about 1880 our knowledge of the species which can enter into such relationships has been materially extended, and the fungal constituents of the Lichens are known to include Basidiomycetes as well as Ascomycetes.

Still, the reindeer frequents it for its lichens, and on the drier slopes of the moraine deposits there occur four species of lemming, hunted by the Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus).

This is particularly marked in certain lichens of shrubby habit.

~any Algae, lichens, and mosses are included among lithophytes, ai id also Saxifraga Aizoon, S.

In the Florideae, Lichens and Laboulbenjaceae the, male cell is a non-motile spermatium, which is carried to the female organ.

(2) The tundra or region of intensely cold winters, forbidding tree-growth, where mosses and lichens cover most of the ground when unfrozen, and shrubs occur of species which in other conditions are trees, here stunted to the height of a few inches.

They feed chiefly on grass, but also on moss, lichens and tender shoots of the willow and pine.

Taught the people how to prepare dyes from the plants and lichens, and many of the patterns still show signs of Moorish origin.

Lichens are generally mounted on sheets of paper of the ordinary size, several specimens from different localities being laid upon one sheet, each specimen having been first placed on a small square of paper which is gummed on the sheet, and which has the locality, date, name of collector, &c., written upon it.

Lichens for the herbarium should, whenever possible, be sought for on a slaty or laminated rock, so as to procure them on flat thin pieces of the same, suitable for mounting.

Many lichens, such as the Verrucariae and Collemaceae, are found in the best condition during the winter months.

Those fungi which are of a dusty nature, and the Myxomycetes or Mycetozoa may, like the lichens, be preserved in small boxes and arranged in drawers.

Below the mountain crests, where only the hardiest lichens and mosses can survive, comes a belt of large timber, including many giant trees, 200 ft.

The last trees which struggle for existence on the verge of the tundras are crippled dwarfs and almost without branches, and trees a hundred years old are only a few feet high and a few inches through and thickly encrusted with lichens.'

In the alpine tracts of the north the narrowness of the valleys and the steep stony slopes strewn with debris, on which only lichens and mosses are able to grow, make every plot of green grass (even if it be only of Carex) valuable.

AaK6s, a bag), a botanical term for the membranous sacs containing the reproductive spores in certain lichens and fungi.

It is found in the form of its acid potassium salt in many plants, especially in wood-sorrel (Oxalis acetosella) and in varieties of Rumex; as ammonium salt in guano; as calcium salt in rhubarb root, in various lichens and in plant cells; as sodium salt in species of Salicornia and as free acid in varieties of Boletus.

Hooker enumerated twenty-one species of flowering plants, and seven of ferns, lycopods, and Characeae; at least seventyfour species of mosses, twenty-five of Hepaticae, and sixty-one of lichens are known, and there are probably many more.

On the summits of the Adirondacks are a few alpine species, such as reindeer moss and other lichens; on the shores of Long Island, Staten Island and Westchester county are a number of maritime species; and on Long Island are several species especially characteristic of the pine barrens of New Jersey.

ACOTYLEDONES, the name given by Antoine Laurent de Jussieu in 1789 to the lowest class in his Natural System of Botany, embracing flowerless plants, such as ferns, lycopods, horse-tails, mosses, liverworts, sea-weeds, lichens and fungi.

The outside consists of moss and lichens, and according to Selby, "is always accordant with the particular colour of its situation."

Their food is entirely vegetable, especially grass roots and stalks, shoots of dwarf birch, reindeer lichens and mosses, in search of which they form, in winter, long galleries through the turf or under the snow.

LICHENS, in botany, compound or dual organisms each consisting of an association of a higher fungus, with a usually unicellular, sometimes filamentous, alga.

Owing to their peculiar dual nature, lichens are able to live in situations where neither the alga nor fungus could exist alone.

The lichens are characterized by their excessively slow growth and their great length of life.

Until comparatively recent times the lichens were considered as a group of simple organisms on a level with algae and fungi.

In 1865 De Bary suggested the possibility that such lichens as Collema, Ephebe, &c., arose as a result of the attack of parasitic Ascomycetes upon the algae, Nostoc, Chroococcus, &c. In 1867 the observations of Famintzin and Baranetzky showed that the gonidia, in certain cases, were able to live outside the lichen-thallus, and in the case of Physcia, Evernia and Cladonia were able to form zoospores.

Although Schwendener supported this view of the " dual " nature of lichens by very strong evidence and identified the more common lichen-gonidia with known free-living algae, yet the theory was received with a storm of opposition by nearly all lichenologists.

He investigated the exact relation of fungus and alga and showed that the same alga is able to combine with a number of different fungi to form lichens; thus Chroolepns umbrinus is found as the gonidia of 13 different lichen genera.

The view of the dual nature of lichens had hitherto been based on analysis; the final proof of this view was now supplied by the actual synthesis of a lichen from fungal and algal constituents.

We can distinguish this class of forms as lichens with a homoiomerous thallus, i.e.

The majority of the lichens, however, possess a stratified thallus in which the gonidia are found as a definite layer or layers embedded in a pseudoparenchymatous mass of fungal hyphae, i.e.

The cortical layer is usually more developed on the side towards the light, while in many lichens this is the only side provided with a cortical layer.

Pleurococcus (Cystococcus) humicola in the majority of lichens, e.g.

- In about 100 species of lichens peculiar growths are developed in the interior of the thallus which cause a slight projection of the upper or lower surface.

The soredia are found in a large number of lichens, and consist of a single gonidium or groups of gonidia, surrounded by a sheath and hyphae.

The soredia are the most successful method of reproduction in lichens, for not only are some forms nearly always without spore-formation and in others the spores laregly abortive, but in all cases the spore represents only the fungal component of the thallus, and its success in the development of a new lichen-thallus depends on the chance meeting, at the time of germination, with the appropriate algal component.

We find two chief types of fruit bodies in the lichens, the perithecium and apothecium; the first when the fungal element is a member of the Pyrenomycetes division of the Ascomycetes, the second when the fungus belongs to the Discomycetes division.

In the two genera of lichens - the Basidiolichens - i n which the fungus is a member of the Basidiomycetes, we have the fructification characteristic of that class of fungi: these are dealt with separately.

As the remarks on the nature of the spermatia show, the question of the sexuality of the lichens has been hotly disputed in common with that of the rest of the Ascomycetes.

In other lichens we should expect to find the ascogenous hyphae arising directly from the vegetative hyphae as in Humaria rutilans among the ordinary fungi, where the process is associated with the fusion of vegetative nuclei.

Cytological details of nuclear behaviour among the lichens are, however, difficult to obtain owing 'to the slow growth of these forms and the often refractory t' nature of the material in the matter of preparation for microscopical ex amination.

As is clear from the above, nearly all the lichens are produced by the association of an ascomycetous fungus with algae.

For some obscure reason the Basidiomycetes do not readily form lichens, so that only a few forms are known in which the fungal element is a member of this family.

Lichens are found growing in various situations such as bare earth, the bark of trees, dead wood, the surface of stones and rocks, where they have little competition to fear from ordinary plants.

As is well known, the lichens are often found in the most exposed and arid situations; in the extreme polar regions these plants are practically the only vegetable forms of life.

It is owing to the power of disintegrating by both mechanical and chemical means the rocks on which they are growing that lichens play such an important part in soil-production.

The resistance of lichens is extraordinary; they may be cooled to very low temperatures and heated to high temperatures without being killed.

The life of many lichens thus consists of alternating periods of activity when moisture is plentiful, and completely suspended animation under conditions of dryness.

Though so little sensitive to drought and extremes of temperature lichens appear to be very easily affected by the presence in the air of noxious substances such as are found in large cities or manufacturing towns.

The growth of lichens is extremely slow and many of them take years before they arrive at a spore-bearing stage.

The chemistry of lichens is very complex, not yet fully investigated and can only be very briefly dealt with here.

In numerous lichens, e.g.

Calcium oxalate is a very common substance, especially in crustaceous lichens; fatty oil in the form of drops or as an infiltration in the membrane is also common; it sometimes occurs in special cells and in extreme cases may represent 90% of the dry substance as in Verrucaria calciseda, Biatora immersa.

- Many lichens, as is well known, exhibit a vivid colouring which is usually due to the incrustation of the hyphae with crystalline excretory products.

The classification of lichens is unique in the fact that chemical colour reactions are used by many lichenologists in the discrimination of species, and these reactions are included in the specific diagnoses.

As it flows it takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling, as you look down on them, the laciniated, lobed, and imbricated thalluses of some lichens; or you are reminded of coral, of leopard's paws or birds' feet, of brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds.